Articles by Jane C. Elkin

Leapin’ lizards, Annie, how do you still break hearts after 35 years, even when we know what’s coming? It’s not just your heart-warming premise or sweet songs, your adorable mutt or Vaudevillian villains. It’s the magic of a cast so sincere and invested that two hankies are not enough for Colonial Players’ family holiday classic.
...

Good theater, like good fiction, convinces the audience to suspend its disbelief, and Mark Twain’s genius was his ability to convey place and personality with such unblinking realism that we embrace his story no matter how far-fetched. In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, that meant accepting that Tom (John Patterson), a kid from a good home, could be best friends with the town delinquent, Huck Finn (Erik W....

Last chance to see Shakespeare live before he disappears into the mists of time for another 400 years

Not ready to hang up Halloween? Then Theater 11 has just the treat for you this Friday, All Saints Day and Saturday, All Souls Day). It’s a spirited comedy featuring a celebrity ghost, Shakespeare.
...

Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing endures because audiences love smart love stories. Twenty years ago, Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson revived it on film. Joss Whedon’s critically acclaimed remake — now showing at the West End Cinema in D.C. — is set in modern-day California.
...

A little Neil Simon and a little Seinfeld, it’s a lively summer diversion.

When The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife debuted on Broadway in 2000, one reviewer called its three leads the only three reasons to see Charles Busch’s breakthrough Tony-nominee. It’s not hard to see why.
...

With dinner and drinks, Comedy in the Courtyard is your ticket to Tuesday night fun

Sitting under the towering magnolia of the Reynolds Tavern courtyard, I sip a spiked summer Tavern Tea and munch fried green tomatoes with shrimp and corn relish, all the enticement I need to come out on a warm weeknight. But there’s more. Listening to the gentle strains of a harpsichord, I am transported back in time — way back to 1664 for Moliere’s Tartuffe, the Annapolis Shakespeare Company’s first production in the new Comedy in the Courtyard series.
...

Atorch flickers in the castle keep before the orchestra plays a note, illuminating the Dark Ages and modern times alike with the dream of Camelot. 2nd Star Productions’ revival of Lerner and Loewe’s 1960 blockbuster sparkles like a chandelier with 33 local stars in sumptuous costumes and sets, under the visionary direction of Jane B. Wingard. It’s three hours of enchantment and unflagging entertainment.
...

Swing! was a gusty and lusty blast from the past on Friday night at Annapolis Summer Garden Theatre. At 53 degrees with gale-force winds, it felt like Winter Garden Theatre. President Carolyn Kirby said she hadn’t seen the like since the cast were babes. But as the program notes, “Swing was never a time or place — it has always been a state of mind.” In the end, mind triumphed over season.
...